Semen Semenchenko

Kostyantyn Ihorovych Hryshyn (24 October 1982-), also known as Semen Semenchenko, was the founder and leader of the Ukraine-affiliated Donbas Battalion volunteer unit during the Ukrainian Civil War.

Biography
Kostyantyn Ihorovych Hryshyn was born on 24 October 1982 in Sevastopol, Crimea, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (present-day Ukraine) to an ethnic Russian family. At an early age, he moved to Donetsk, and he gained a degree in filmmaking. He worked in business activities in the field of security before the outbreak of the Ukrainian Civil War, when he founded the volunteer Donbas Battalion. Semenchenko led his unit during the fierce combat with the Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic, and was wounded on 19 August 2014 by friendly shrapnel from mortars during the battle of Ilovaisk. He revealed his identity on 1 September 2014, removing his balaclava, and he stated that his family was safe and that he had nothing to fear. Prior to the first democratic elections after the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution, he joined the Sampomich ("Self-Reliance") pro-Europeanist and Christian democratic political party and was elected to the Verkhovna Rada on 27 November 2014.